Tuesday, July 26, 2005

The Invasion of Panama: "There was something else going on."

With George Bush I as Commander and Chief, the United States invaded Panama in December 1989.It has been a long time since I have thought about this invasion but, my curiosity about the deeper reasons for this invasion have recently been awakened.

A few days ago I spoke to a former marine who was one of the first marines leading the U. S. invasion. This guy is a pretty red, white and blue kind of guy and gave me some patriotic reasons for the invasion. You know, the normal "Noriega was a bad guy kind of stuff".

But after careful probing and questioning, it became obvious that even he had some reservations about what the invasion was all about.

This is what he finally said to me:

"You know there was something else going on when that invasion took place. We had some target buildings we were given to destroy. The buildings weren't any type of military threat to us and we kind of looked around at each other and said 'What the hell is this all about?', but we followed orders and blew the buildings up. I really think that grabbing Noriega was a secondary reason for the invasion. There was something else going on."